In recent years, various technologies have been actively studied whereby luminous elements or filters used in displays or the like, and also microlenses or the like, are formed directly by discharging various liquids using ink-jet technology.
With such a technology whereby a device is created using ink-jet technology, performance requirements with respect to the ink-jet head are more stringent than hitherto.
One aspect of performance required of the ink jet head is impact positioning of ink drops discharged from a nozzle.
Various proposals have hitherto been made as methods of improving the impact positioning capability of the ink-jet head (see Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 2, for example).
An ink-jet head described in Patent Document 1 is equipped with a nozzle pipe provided with a nozzle that discharges ink at its tip, a piezoelectric element attached to the nozzle pipe, a head unit that holds the nozzle pipe and piezoelectric element, and a head case in which a plurality of head units are provided.
A head unit is configured so as to be freely attachable to and removable from the head case. A head unit and head case are aligned while observing the nozzle position of the tip of the nozzle pipe by means of a magnifying glass, and after alignment, are fixed by means of a screw, adhesive, or the like.
By means of this method, an ink-jet head can be provided that offers good alignment precision of a plurality of nozzles.
Meanwhile, an ink-jet recording apparatus described in Patent Document 2 improves ink drop rectilinearity and reduces satellite occurrence through a contrivance of the waveform that passes through the ink-jet head, and thereby improves impact positioning capability.
In addition to these systems, ink-jet heads have been proposed that achieve good impact positioning capability through improvement of nozzle processing precision, such as the nozzle shape and the spacing of nozzles (hereinafter referred to as “nozzle pitch”), improvement of the precision of alignment of a nozzle and pressure chamber, water-repellent film formation on the nozzle plate, and so forth.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. SHO 63-74645
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. HEI 9-226106